Monday, April 11, 2011

Ohio Education Association: Shared Sacrifice?

Wondering if the outrageous 2009 Ohio Education Association spending I covered in February was part of a trend? Consider the average OEA employee’s pay, stacked up against the averages for Ohio private industry workers, government employees, and teachers:

This list doesn’t include officers, but rest assured the president ($190,000), vice-president ($186,471), and secretary-treasurer ($180,310) won’t starve. The OEA also managed to scrape together $20,000 apiece for Progressive think-tanks Policy Matters Ohio and Progress Ohio (in addition to the more than $1.6 million blown on Democrats in the 2010 cycle). But you see, the OEA only wants Ohioans to pay more taxes for the children. Here’s what the union had to say upon passage of Senate Bill 5 from its House committee, in an email distributed to members:

As you know, this bill is a serious attack on the students you serve and the communities we live in.

And upon the House markup’s final approval in the Senate:

As you know, the bill is a clear attempt to gut the ability of educators, nurses, firefighters, police and all public employees to have a voice on the job. Senate Bill 5 does nothing to create jobs and instead gives politicians free reign to cut public education in Ohio.

If teachers realize they can work with their peers, administrators, and school boards to improve the quality of public education without paying leftist organizers, the union loses. When the National Education Association’s state bosses dictate policy while using their members’ own money to keep teachers terrified of change, it’s no surprise the union comes out on top.

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Third Base Politics is an Ohio-centric conservative blog that has been featured at Hot Air, National Review, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Michelle Malkin, and Ace of Spades, among others.